Sartre's second century

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Sartre's Legacy in an Era of Obscurantism 213 The threatened environmental catastrophe, the overriding issue of the present, could most usefully, with appropriate modifications, be subjected to the kind of analysis that Sartre carried out on Soviet society in the unfinished second volume of the Critique: "[T]he anti-social forces of the practico-inert impose a negative unity of self-destruction on the society, by usurping the unifying power of the praxis which produced them." 26 Indeed it could almost be possible to imagine fancifully that the Critique might have been written with this crisis specifically in mind. Consider, for example, the following, as summarised by Aronson (Sartre was in this instance discussing problems of industrialisation in the USSR): For an example of "necessity" revealing praxis as its underside, Sartre takes the inert synthetic relationship set up between two cities when industrial expansion requires that their communications be improved [...]. If there is now a scarcity of transport between A and B, this situation demands new investment of resources. But even this choice will only solve the problem by posing new ones elsewhere, while retaining the original practico-inert demands engendered by the original praxis. Necessity then is "the temporary alienation of this praxis in its own practical field" by creating new relations between elements of the field. 27 Conclusion Obscurantist tendencies have always maintained an underground survival, even in the most rationalist of cultures. The novelty of present times is that they have flooded to the surface and, to change the metaphor, are militantly on the march around the globe, and more worryingly still, they have started to be taken seriously in areas of intellectual discourse. 28 What might be termed the positivist opposition to their penetration, represented by writers like Francis Wheen or Richard Dawkins, is handicapped by the lack of an effective philosophical foundation and an adequate understanding of what has generated them; in other words, they lack a dialectical comprehension of the processes at work. 29 The strength of Sartre's approach is that it can supply just that: it is capable of totalising the field under consideration. Sartre's philosophy and other writings, and their engagement with the circumstances and dilemmas of his time, hold Quoted in Aronson, Second Critique, 115. 27 Ibid., 126. 28 For example, in 2005, The Times Higher Education Supplement (as it then was) conducted a seemingly serious discussion on the theme of "Intelligent Design". 29 Demonstrated in the dreadful final section of Wheen's otherwise admirable volume.
214 Chapter Fourteen numerous lessons for our present one. Overall, they provide an understanding of human relationships much more valid than the alternatives, based as those are on the variety of mysticisms currently on offer, or on the rationalist perspectives which lack his dialectical insights. Works Cited Anderson, Perry. Considerations on Western Marxism. London: Verso, 1979. Aronson, Ronald. The Dialectics of Disaster: A Preface to Hope. London: Verso, 1983. —. Sartre*s Second Critique. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1987. Beauvoir, Simone de. The Prime of Life (trans. Peter Green). Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2003. Birchall, Ian. Sartre Against Stalinism. New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2004. Clough, Arthur Hugh. "The Latest Decalogue", in Victorian Poetry (ed. E. K. Brown), 384. New York: The Ronald Press, 1942. Ferguson, Niall. Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2003. Gellner, Ernest. Postmodernism, Reason and Religion. London: Routledge, 1992. Gerassi, John. Jean-Paul Sartre: Hated Conscience of his Century. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1989. La Carpa, Dominik. A Preface to Sartre. London: Methuen, 1979. Nairn, Tom. "Breakwaters of 2000: From Ethnic to Civic Nationalism", New Left Review, 214, November / December 1995, 91-103. O'Donohoe, Benedict. "Why Sartre Matters", Philosophy Now, November /December 2005, 7-10. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness (trans. Hazel Barnes). London: Methuen, 1969. —. Critique of Dialectical Reason, I (trans. Alan Sheridan-Smith). London: Verso, 2004. Schick, Carol, JoAnn Jaffe and Alisa M. Watkinson (eds). Contesting Fundamentalisms. Winnipeg: Fernwood, 2004. Sokal, Alan, and Jean Bricmont. Intellectual Impostures. London: Profile, 1998. Wheen, Francis. How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions. London: Fourth Estate, 2004.
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Sartre's Second Century Edited by B
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viii Table of Contents CHAPTER NINE
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X Introduction unique in embracing
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CHAPTER ONE SARTRE: A BIOGRAPHICAL
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Sartre: A Biographical Sketch 3 Par
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CHAPTER TWO AUTOBIOGRAPHY, ONTOLOGY
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Autobiography, Ontology and Respons
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CHAPTER THREE LITERATURE AND PHILOS
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Literature and Philosophy in Sartre
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Temporality and the Death of Lucien
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Sartre and Nietzsche: Brothers in A
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CHAPTER SIX 1945-2005: EXISTENTIALI
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1945-2005: Existentialism and Human
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Sartre, Intentionality and Praxis 8
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The New Sartre: A Postmodern Progen
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CHAPTER NINE A SURREPTITIOUS ROMANT
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Reading Sartre with Victor Hugo 125
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Hidden Wordplay in the Works of Jea
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CHAPTER ELEVEN DESTABILISING IDENTI
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The Literary-Philosophical Experien
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